Wind turbines, which some say are inefficient and ugly.
THE VIEW FROM HEREIT is always disconcerting to find yourself in agreement with a truly ghastly person. Somebody you would not normally dream of admitting into your house, for fear their views might spread bigotry and prejudice all over the furniture.
Richard Littlejohn is the tabloid equivalent of a London taxi driver (“String ’em up, cut off their whatsits, don’t give me that elf’n’safety malarkey, it’s political correctness gawn mad”, etc, etc) and delivers a regular rant in the Daily Mail, a paper described by its editor as the columnist’s “spiritual home”.
I’ll say. Mr Littlejohn drives the Daily Mail cab twice a week, while devoted readers sit in the back and lap up his stream of reactionary opinions. He is never one to take the conciliatory approach.
“Why weren’t the police clubbing these looters like baby seals?” he demanded after the summer riots.
No, I’m not going to get into an argument with those who would like to see our police doing exactly that. I just feel if we are to retain any grip on civilisation or have a police force that rules by the law and not by violence in this country, it’s probably not a good idea to rampage around splitting people’s heads open.
Anyway, I’m not in the habit of travelling in Mr Littlejohn’s cab, so when I heard he’d been writing about the Island’s eco initiative, I hailed him down with a certain amount of trepidation.
In a piece headlined “Tiptoe through the turbines …”, Richard Littlejohn blasts the Island’s plans for self-sufficiency, piling up particular scorn for alternative energy schemes.
“Every household in Britain is set to pay £280 over the odds for gas and electricity to fund the government’s ‘green’ agenda, which amounts to little more than bunging firms billions of pounds to clutter our beautiful, world-heritage-site countryside and our outstanding natural coastline with utterly useless War of the Worlds windmills.”
There’s a fair amount of hyperbolic twaddle in Littlejohn’s piece. He implies readers of The Guardian automatically support wind turbines (not true) and spirals off into absurd fantasy in the interests of whipping up his passengers into a frenzy.
“I wonder if anyone has bothered to ask the inhabitants of the IW if they want to be forced to drive rented electric cars, knit their own toilet paper …”
That is just silly. And there is nothing wrong in having an eco initiative so long as it’s realistic and cost-effective.
But I have to agree with Littlejohn’s warning of the Island having its “scenery desecrated by hopelessly inefficient solar panels and wind turbines sprouting like triffids”. It goes against the grain to say this but he’s right.
OK, that’s enough. I’m getting out of his cab before he gets started on capital punishment. And I’m not giving him a tip. He may be correct about alternative energy schemes but I’m pretty certain I shall be taking the bus in future.
Were these the students who can’t afford uni?
WERE sixth-form students, whose drunk and disorderly behaviour at the BAYS Ball at Shanklin was branded by the police as “appalling”, related in any way to sixth-form students who are whinging about being too poverty-stricken to go to university after a hike in tuition fees?
Putting aside the fact they seem too thick to realise they do not have to pay these fees until they can afford to do so (the taxpayer will kindly stump up in the meantime), what kind of straitened circumstances do they imagine they’re in that allows them to buy enough alcohol to get hammered?
They’d already paid £22 for their ball ticket, after which they found the wherewithal to get completely wrecked, causing the police and paramedics to be called out and the event to be closed early.
Perhaps these bright young things might provide an economic graph, showing the correlation between the amount they spend on alcohol and the amount they say they can’t afford to pay for university. Oh yes, and another graph demonstrating the difference between the facts of the new fees system and the tenuous grasp by these sparkling luminaries on the actuality.
There may have been only a small number of students responsible for the mayhem at the BAYS Ball but their behaviour has put the future of the event in jeopardy. It’s been running for 14 years and its name apparently derives from the British Association of Young Scientists.
Well, they’ve certainly changed from the chemistry swots I used to know at school, who wouldn’t ever have dreamed of going to a party. I don’t know what this lot do when they’re not whooping it up. Write treatises on their own damaged livers, maybe.